


Haunted by Spectres

by fineandwittie



Category: Will (TV 2017)
Genre: Brave New World - Freeform, I can't stop writing these, M/M, S1 E4 A Brave New World, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 21:17:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: What if Marlowe had gone after Will, determined to know what the drug showed him?





	Haunted by Spectres

“Will!”

Was it the spectre of the dead that called him back? Was it Baxter on his heels or Cousin Southwell come to damn him? Home. He needed home. He needed walls and doors and locks between him and whatever haunt was calling for him. 

“Will!” The voice was closer now and familiar.

Will stumbled on the way up the stairs to his room and just managed to clear the doorway, when a hand snagged the collar of his jacket. He shrugged it off, nearly falling into the room when his hands came free of its cuffs. The hand came back wrapping around Will’s wrist. He cried out, spinning to face the spectre and found Marlowe there.

Will swayed back into the room, dragging Marlowe with him. “Kit.” His own voice was weak, wavering. He blinked hard, trying to force his eyes to focus.

“Will. Will.” Kit seized his face, backing himself against the closed door and pulling Will along with him. 

They were pressed together again, chest to chest, groin to groin, just like that day across Marlowe’s table. It seemed so long ago now. Time was elastic, stretching in ropey lengths or passing by in a blink. Will breathed, to steady himself, but all he could smell was Kit. Drug and sweat and perfume and something that lingered only on Kit. 

When had Kit lost his shirt? When had Will? 

“Kit, make them go. Make them…Make…Kit…” Will couldn’t seem to pin down a thought long enough to get it out, but this was Kit. Kit always knew what he was trying to say. Knew what Will himself had not yet discovered. 

“Who are they, Will? Tell me what you saw. Tell me.” Kit kissed him. Harsh and biting and the exact opposite of the kind of kisses that Will wanted from Kit, just like the first time. He undid Will’s flies and shoved at his denims, eager for skin.

“B-Baxter. Kit, make him go. Make my cousin go. Make them. Make them!” Will's fingers scrabbled against the hard cut if Kit's muscles, but managed to snag on his leather pants. Will pulled him closer.

There was a knock at the door. Kit snarled, shoving Will deeper into the room. Will staggered across it, discarding his denims as he went, and fell onto the bed. He curled up, covering his ears with his hands. Maybe that would keep out the spectres.

Kit rounded and pulled the door open. “What? What do you want?”

It was Alice, in the doorway, her mouth agape. “Marlowe? What—“

Kit snarled at her, but she ignored him, peering past his bare shoulder to the room within. Her hand flew to her mouth at the sight of Will nude and in bed. Her gaze came back to Marlowe’s twisted face, his naked torso, the lines scored into his chest. She narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Have him tonight. But know that I’m not giving him up. Not over this. Not so easily."

The snarl smoothed and Kit smirked. “Well, well. He has picked a good one. Our Will had very good taste.”

She sneered at him and marched off down the hall. Kit shut the door and latched it. 

He stopped beside the bed to shuck his pants. When he laid down next to Will, he could hear the man muttering, “Go away. Go away. God, please. Make them stop.”

“Will. Will, look at me. Will. Tell me. What did you see?”

Will shook his head, refusing to open his eyes, and burrowed into Kit’s chest. Kit sighed and wrapped his arms around the smaller man. He’d find out what Will saw in the morning.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Will awoke with a start, head aching fiercely. He froze at the sound of someone else’s breathing. He turned his head, slowly on the pillow, terrified to see last night’s spectres back again. 

Kit Marlowe’s face looked, calmer in sleep, though no more innocent. The manic fire that burned in his eyes was hidden. Will had a brief thought that he could wake up to the sight before him every morning for the rest of their lives and be content, before the guilt washed in. He didn’t remember going to bed with Kit the night before. He’d have liked, if he Was going to commit this particular sin, to at the very least remember the act. 

He reached out, trailing his fingers over Kit’s shoulder and chest, trying to remember. 

Kit’s eyes popped open and he smiled for the space of a heartbeat, before his usual smirk settled into place. Will’s breath caught in his throat. The smile had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

"You're awake then." Kit mumbled, still half drowsing.

“Did we lay together last night, Kit? I don’t remember it.”

Kit snorted, fully awake now, and considered lying. “No. You were higher than a hawk on the hunt. Will you tell me what you saw? God? The devil?”

Will twitched a smile, though his eyes looked haunted as he remember the visions the drug had given him. “Baxter. Baxter crawled up out of hell for me. He tried to drag me back with him. And my cousin, Southwell. Condemning me for not taking up his cause. I saw my uncle’s spirit, bowels ripped open and spilling onto the floor. They wanted me to take up the cause.”

Kit exhaled. Hell. Will had seen Hell. Maybe Kit could achieve it, conquer it, through Will. “And will you?”

Will shook his head. “It is not my fight. And if the spectres of hell wish me to do it, then I most certainly mustn’t. If my cousin’s spirit walks the earth without his body then he is not about God’s work.”

Kit watched Will as he spoke, inching a hand up toward the other’s face. “What will you do in place of it, then?”

“Write. As always.” Will turned wide eyes on him. “Kit, what happened last night? I don’t remember…I remember stumbling up the stairs. You caught me and pushed me in here and shut the door. After that it’s all a fog.”

Kit’s lips curled in the damned smirk. “Alice stopped by.”

Will sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh God.”

“Indeed. You were nude on the bed and I was…halfway there already. We didn't swiv, but we did other things before she interrupted us.”

“She saw, then. I hope that she will not tell her father or her brother. She knows that I am Catholic and she has kept it silent.” Kit laughed at that, rolling onto his back. Will rolled after him, coming up on his elbow and resting his other hand on Kit’s chest. “What?”

“Your lovely Alice told me that she’s not giving you up, not to the likes of me. I think if I am to have you, then I shall have a fight on my hands about it.” Will gaped at him. Surely not? “Perhaps we can work out an arrangement. After all, if I leave behind Thomas entirely, he shall be quite cross and tell his uncle all about me and then where will I be?”

Will frowned. He remember the young man that Kit had kissed at the tavern. “Thomas?”

“Thomas Walsingham, nephew to Lord Walsingham the hunter of Catholics and dissidents.”

“Good lord. What on earth made you bed him?”

Kit shrugged and curled a hand up to pull Will down to him. “Why do I do any of what I do?”

The kiss was fierce and full of lust. Will’s headache fled and, breaking the kiss, he rolled to straddle Kit, grinning down at him. “Well, let’s see if I can make such a battle worth your while. I will take thee at thy word: Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized. No more concerned with religion, only with the theater and with thee.”

Kit laughed, delighted. “Stay thy hand, Master Playwright, for writers and actors are notorious liars. Come. Kiss me and we’ll decide later.”

“Being your slave, what should I do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire?” Will grinned and leaned down into the kiss.


End file.
